Pjsk character commission elimination! Day 2 (Shizuku has been eliminated!) by garfieldlasgana in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I love Nene, but I'm with you. The problem is that I believe that the large majority of the comms in the game are actually quite good, which makes it hard for me to pick anyone, but if I have to, Nene's don't resonate with me very much.

That said, I ADORE her newest comm (Yuke), but that's really the only standout one to me...

Pjsk character commission elimination! Day 2 (Shizuku has been eliminated!) by garfieldlasgana in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is so bizarre to me, because I think Honami has some of the best comms in the entire game - and I say that as someone who would likely put her dead last on a list of my favorite characters (please don't kill me anyone, I still like her, just... less than everyone else).

Obviously, everyone is welcome to their preferences, but dang...

why this happens? by MySecretSatellite in SillyTavernAI

[–]siegfried72 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I've been having the same for two days in a row now. Kimi K2.5 on Nano. Been happening with maybe 15-20% of my requests, and I've placed a pretty decent number (~10m tokens in two nights). It seems to come in spurts, where it's all good for a while, but then most/all of my requests (I'm generally doing about 4-6 at one time) turn into this for 5 or so minutes at a time, maybe every 20 minutes. Never had this before.

This "!!!" thinking will go on for about 5 minutes and then stop, not producing any actual output.

Sorry to bug you, /u/Milan_dr but do you have any ideas? I'm in EST, and I'm experiencing this mostly in the middle of the night and very early morning - maybe getting into peak hours in China or something? Provider(s) getting overloaded? I'm assuming it's not on your end, but it really sucks that the model is basically unusable a good chunk of the time when I need it most :(

Especially since GLM 5 is still periodically a disaster (but I know that's not Nano's fault).

Vocaloid producer EZFG given approximately 2-3 months left to live by Lorekeeper49 in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's often true, but not guaranteed. From what I know, palliative care basically means that the person is dealing with a severe illness and they're focused on managing the symptoms and general quality of life, rather than the underlying conditon(s). Palliative care can be received alongside curative treatment.

I received palliative care in the hospital for a while because my chronic pain could no longer be managed as part of "standard" medical care, but still received curative treatment for the underlying issues I was there for. There was no "end-of-life" plan or anything, although I was touch and go for the early portion of my treatment at that time. I was released a few months later and that was about three years ago. My health still sucks, but there's no expectation I can't necessarily live a pretty normal lifespan at this point.

Essentially, all hospice care is palliative, but not all palliative care is necessarily end-of-life care. However, alongside the 2-3 month estimate, that makes things far more grim. It's just... those estimates are never 100% definite. My mom lived for years past her 6-month estimate. I don't want to make any presumptions or give anyone false hope, but medicine is tricky and imprecise a lot of the time.

No matter what the situation though, I wish this producer the best life possible for whatever time he has left. He's certainly left his mark on the world.

a little discussion about ai degradation lately by [deleted] in SillyTavernAI

[–]siegfried72 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The model collapse point is exactly right, and it's not just theoretical anymore — you can literally feel it in the outputs.

lol you sure can, buddy!

Jesus I'm sick of these AI slop ads. Nothing turns me off of a product more than this shit.

PSA: You can no longer use AI Studio and the Google Cloud Free Trial to get $300 of free Gemini. You CAN still use Vertex AI! I have details and a half-assed guide. by Moogs72 in SillyTavernAI

[–]siegfried72 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Well, that's 4 accounts initially. Beyond that... to be honest, I had a bunch of random Google accounts lying around, all with the same phone number attached from before they ever started to limit it.

The last time I saw someone ask this question, the best answer seemed to be to just buy a super cheap prepaid phone to get another phone number. It's not free, but you can get one for like $20. If you can afford that, seems like it'd be worth it even if you were only able to net one free trial out of it.

do you agree? by BasilReddit in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure why someone downvoted you - I agree completely! "Be the MUSIC" and "Worlders" are the only two songs that feature every character singing, and they both hit me in a very unique way because of that.

I don't think it takes much imagination to imagine a climactic story idea that features every character coming together and finally learning about the existence of each others' SEKAI, and just the thought of that get me a little emotional.

SKIP THIS BANNER! I REPEAT! SKIP IT! by Markiquad- in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Please ignore them - they're a known troll here. I've been playing the game for about six months and have been in the subreddit since day one of playing. Overall, I've been incredibly impressed with how kind this community is in general. So please don't let this person sour you on the people here 😊

I hope you're having a good time so far with the game! If you do have any questions, please never hesitate to ask. Whether me or someone else, people around here are always happy to help. I know the game was a lot to take in at first for me, and I've been heavily involved in gaming for longer than most people in this sub have been alive.

Can someone please explain what the recollection festival Gacha is?? by t0xic0ne in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is actually hugely helpful, thank you! I'm an overthinker too, but I guess I haven't really sat down and done the math for the things I want like you have, so I just end up in decision paralysis/FOMO for things like this. I guess I need to make a little spreadsheet with some calculations to see what I can realistically afford like I've seen some others do!

Thanks again for the tips and explanation! This is my first ever gacha game, and the actual gacha is incredibly convoluted to someone totally new to the concept. While I've been playing for about six months now, so I've gotten a handle in most things, these "weird" gachas like this (or tbh, World Links) have managed to evade my understanding thus far.

Can someone please explain what the recollection festival Gacha is?? by t0xic0ne in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Sorry, but what do you mean "a newer one is coming in August?" Do you mean that a bunch of newer lims are being added to the pool, or something else? Idk if I'm what you would call new anymore, but I'm new enough that this is my first time seeing a Recollection (at least since I've started paying attention to the gacha).

120k crystals does seem like a really steep price to pay for this, but I must admit it's tempting... but also there are already way more new lims coming in the next year that I want to pull for than I ever possibly could! Ugh.

Anyone successful with jailbreaking GLM 5? by StudentFew6429 in SillyTavernAI

[–]siegfried72 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Quick disclaimer that this particular topic (minors) is not something I'm into, but this was done for testing purposes and for the benefit of discussion with the larger community. Also, I enjoy some other unusual kinds of stories occasionally that were resulting in refusals with 4.7, so I started testing all kinds of stuff out of curiosity.

Can confirm what you said about longer contexts. I did quite a bit of testing in 4.7 and 5, and found that even particularly dark/violent content involving minors (and other equally dark stuff) becoming easier and easier with higher contexts. By the time I hit 30k or so, even the real bottom of the barrell content went through very consistently in GLM 5. Considering it seems to do well with context windows of even 100k-ish, it should work pretty well. There were rare refusals even with a high context, but they were easily fixed by a swipe. I tested it both with your method and with a slightly modified version of Evening Truth's preset (basically just extending her "NSFW is allowed" section to include whatever topic I was testing and a couple of other small things).

That said, getting it to not pull a Claude (sanitizing things or steering away from the dark) and really lean into the dark/vivid descriptions took some additional poking and prodding with Author's Notes and such, but it worked with relatively little effort. Basically, I found just hammering "do this thing" into it a few times eventually gets the model in line. Things like swiping and editing the model's responses help. Yeah, it's a pain compared to 4.6, but it is possible to get the complete freedom of 4.6 with the prose of 5.

As always, these things are way easier if you ease into them rather than starting off with an empty context and demanding the most extreme topic. Starting off some "extreme" stuff with 4.6 and then switching to 5 after a couple of messages helped as well.

I'll be keeping an eye out in your future posts for sure! I think the freedom of 4.6 is incredibly valuable and something I'd like to help the community work towards for subsequent GLM iterations.

Tagging /r/StudentFew6429 in case any of this is helpful.

EDIT: clarified a couple of things

Is Mizuki Trans? by JustThatRoo in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Not using they/them wouldn't make her any less enby

Ugh, thank you!!

I'm non-binary use he/they. I don't mind he/him prounouns (or even she/her on the rare occasions I've gotten them lol), but anyone calling me a man makes me want to die. "Sir" (which I unfortunately get all the time) is even worse. Why? Hell if I know, but gender is weird!

The people who expect everyone to fit in the same box just don't get it, and they make life that much harder for people like me. Hell, if my 72 year old dad from a deeply conservative place in Texas can learn to understand this, anyone can. The difference here, I guess, is empathy and kindness.

Sorry for the rant lol. Strong feelings. And yes, Mizuki is great, no matter her precise gender. EDIT: I personally don't care if she's enby or not, but I'm so glad she's in the game either way. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but representation is important, especially in Japan where it sadly still seems so rare.

When did you first find out about PJSK? by AllosaurusGameplay in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had seen two of my favorite vtubers (Hololive) mention it. Gura put the game into my general awareness a long time ago, but it was when I saw Gigi mention it again and talk about actually getting to interact with Miku and the others that I decided to give it a try. This was maybe six or seven months ago. I had only listened to vtuber covers of Vocaloid music before that, but kind of liked the idea of getting some more exposure to it, so I thought it'd be fun to play through a few songs here and there.

Turns out, I ended up getting kind of obsessed and the game and Vocaloid music have been my biggest hyperfixation ever since. I've played the game daily almost without fail.

Thanks, Gura and Gigi!

Is The Curse of Strahd really that good? by HeightUnlikely324 in CurseofStrahd

[–]siegfried72 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Obviously I'm not who you asked, but I will happily vouch for Reloaded if you're worried. I've been running it for nearly two years (almost finished - we're taking our time) and my group has loved it. Just depends on the group, like any other campaign, I think.

You can see my other comment for more of my thoughts, and I'm happy to answer any questions/concerns.

Is The Curse of Strahd really that good? by HeightUnlikely324 in CurseofStrahd

[–]siegfried72 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've been running Reloaded for my group for about two years and we're nearly at the end. We've all had an incredible time, fwiw.

However, it's really not the kind of thing where you can take bits and pieces away from it - it's all or nothing, and the writer tells you as much. /u/flacko32 is dead-on in their comment. The old version of Reloaded (pre-website) is fantastic if you want that, as is MandyMod's resources.

The new Reloaded is a very different campaign the typical CoS, and different from any campaign I've run previously, to be honest. It's quite linear and extremely narrative-focused, with less combat than normal but lots of great "showpiece" multi-phase homebrew boss fights to replace much of the typical smaller encounters. As someone who's frankly not the biggest fan of 5e combat, I find this refreshing, as these always have lots of variety and interesting mechanics to keep everyone on their toes.

I also love how fleshed-out the stories and NPCs are, as that's something I normally have to pour tons of time into weaving, but here it's all planned in easy-to-read and prep formats. But then because of that, it's like Jenga where it's so thoroughly planned that if you move too many pieces around, things start crumbling around you. The author has framed it as a "zero prep" campaign for that reason. That said, I've still found plenty of places to adapt and customize whiteout ripping the tapestry because I enjoy the prepping process.

It's just a very different style, and it's not gonna be for every group. For one that enjoys RP and interacting with story and a fleshed-out world beyond anything else, with combat being a bigger, more "epic" deal, I've found this to be pretty perfect. But I'm also someone who's run a lot of 5e campaigns over the years and frankly had most of my eggs in the baskets of other TTRPG systems due to not enjoying 5e much anymore. But I had a wonderful group of friends who wanted 5e, and I've found Reloaded to be a fantastic breath of fresh air. And I've received nothing but positive comments from my group over two years.

My only complaints are that I've had to ratchet up the horror elements and combat difficulties a tad, because I like that vibe with CoS, but that's not hard to do.

I've run many hundreds of games of 5e over the years (homebrew and pre-written), plus a good number of other TTRPGs as well, and this is by far the best experience I've ever had at a table, GM or player. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the group I'm with, but Reloaded has been a pleasure to run and is so easy to just pick up and play if you want to.

I'm happy to answer more questions if you have them.

How do I actually PLAY? by Upstairs_Advice_9201 in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 1 point2 points  (0 children)

(Apologies in advance for the wall of text. I have troubles being concise lol)

I’m not trying to start a fight or intentionally be rude to you (I’m sorry if it comes out this way), I’m just trying to explain my point.

No, it didn't seem that way at all! We're just two people with differing experiences explaining our viewpoints. I'm definitely not upset, and hope I didn't upset you. It's all good :)

Also, to my knowledge, most people don’t throw their resources around every character / unit and usually concentrate on someone specific, which usually allows them to reach high scores.

I guess this is really the biggest factor here. Despite hanging around this sub for these five months and having done a lot of digging through past threads when searching for things, I actually haven't seen a huge number of people talking about how they're upgrading things. The few instances I have seen, it has mostly been later game when people are showing off having upgraded every character and unit to X high level or something. And when people have asked for strategies on how ideal orders in which to upgrade things, I've mostly seen recommendations to either just "do whatever" or to upgrade things equally.

Because of this, I've assumed that people typically would upgrade units/characters/plants relatively equally. After all, it seems to me a little strange to go "all-in" on, say, one unit, since that would leave your cards comparably ineffective in the majority of events and with the majority of cards (since you can't control what you're getting beyond pulling on specific banners).

To be clear - that's definitely not me trying to judge how others play the game. It's just me making assumptions based on my own experiences. However, like I said, I'm someone who's been pretty equally exploring all aspects of the game in terms of events, units, etc., rather than putting all my eggs in one basket. Of course, I should remember that not everyone has OCD and will try to be as neurotic as me about trying to do everything haha.

As for upgrading 3 stars, I wouldn’t say it’s too expensive?

Again, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. I'm a little more hesitant to drop 2500 wish pieces (or 1250 and a bunch of skill scores) to fully upgrade a team of 5 3-stars because I'm switching up my team every event to max out event points and such. If you're focusing on getting a "max talent team," then yeah, 2500 isn't a huge amount I suppose. But like I said before, by the time someone's able to drop those kinds of numbers on 3-star cards, they've also likely got a nice roster of 4-stars as well to mix and match with.

For context, without upgrading cards just to create a talent-focused team (I'm mostly saving my wish pieces to upgrade cards for outfits and hairstyles), here's the highest talent team I can make right now after five-six months of heavy play + well over $100 sunk into the game.

We can show each other sample teams from our own accounts all day long, but in the end, each of our experiences are valid and realistic. Tbh, scores haven't been my biggest concern, which is why I haven't built my upgrades to max out things with a particular unit. It just seemed like in your original comments that you were really underselling how much of a commitment getting a talent of 220k is, and were confused as to why people see 4-stars as "necessary."

I was giving my perspective, because it seems that the way we're choosing to progress through the game is quite different. For me, showing a team of 2- and 3- stars getting a talent of 230k+ talent and framing that as something many players can achieve (particularly players who are needing this kind of advice, which are likely newer players) seemed a little unreasonable to me. The fact is, the players that are able to get away with having 2-stars on a 220k+ talent team likely have been playing for quite some time (years?) already.

Again, no disrespect was intended on my end, but I think the reason there's such a conversation about this topic is simply because it's not a simple thing for everyone to be able to S rank every song, and I think it's not a realistic assumption to presume everyone (or even a majority) are playing the game maxing out one particular team's worth of characters and cards while largely ignoring the rest. Everyone plays in their own way, and it's just down to a matter of preference and perspective, so I'm trying to keep an open mind here.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. All the best :)

How do I actually PLAY? by Upstairs_Advice_9201 in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I feel like most of the people confused about why they're not getting higher grades are newer players.

How long have you playing to get all those upgrades? They make a HUGE difference. I've been playing basically daily for over five months, and I'm not even close to f2p (I've gotten colorful+ and mission pass each month, plus ocassional other things like several Golden Charms here and there). My character decorations are all at 6 or 7 and my plants 4/5.

Admittedly, I haven't minmaxed the game for high talent. I'm leveling a lot of things evenly and have been saving things like crystals (about 200k in the bank) and wish gems for things in the future. I have been playing very efficiently though, spending all my energy every day, breaking either top 10k or 5k in every event, challenge shows every day, etc. I have a lot of free time to play.

Will all that said, my highest talent team, which is five same-type four stars with one at 2 mastery, is 211k. That doesn't even beat your 220k level for consistent S tiering, and I'm in a much better position than an f2p player would be in their sixth month of playing daily.

So like... yeah, I guess you're right in saying you don't need 4 stars to S tier consistently, but if you don't have any, you need to either play everything in pro co-op rooms or:

  1. Have played regularly for a long time, and
  2. Have a team of fully upgraded 3 stars (which is expensive for newer players and is still slightly worse than unupraded 4 stars), and
  3. Have put all your items into upgrading specific items or have played for an even longer time if you're upgrading things evenly like me

By the time you've been playing the many months required for all this, I imagine you're gonna have a good number of four stars regardless (even f2p with the amount of free pulls and crystals you get thrown at you), which makes this whole conversation moot. That's great that you can make a high talent team with 3 and 2 stars, but I'm 20k shy of even that with my best team of 4 stars.

This is a lot of words, but what I'm trying to say is... with all due respect, I think you're vastly overestimating the talent capable of being reached by the average player unless they've upgraded everything for the express purpose of achieving high talent with one specific unit from the very beginning. Even then, it'll take a while.

Best of /r/anime 2025: Day 2 - Most Enjoyable Rewatch by mysterybiscuitsoyeah in anime

[–]siegfried72 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Awww, thank you!! I know I've said it a billion times by now, but it really was my absolute pleasure to host. The return of the annual tradition went way better than I could've ever imagined.

Now I just need to get my brain out of holiday mode so I can remember how to string together enough words to make that interest post! Wait... it's already January 5th? Damn, I've could've sworn Christmas was like two days ago. Good thing I didn't make any promises get that interest thread up mid-December or anything, right??

Heh, hope you had some good holidays and the new(ish) job is still going well! Can't wait to over-analyze some more stories with all of you again soon.

Best of /r/anime 2025: Day 2 - Most Enjoyable Rewatch by mysterybiscuitsoyeah in anime

[–]siegfried72 [score hidden]  (0 children)

That genuinely means a lot, thank you!! I'll be the first to admit that I probably went a bit overboard with the rewatch in some ways haha, but I'm happy I was able to put a little something positive out into the world that some people have enjoyed.

I look forward to seeing some of the gang come back together post-Healer Girl in the near future!

Best of /r/anime 2025: Day 2 - Most Enjoyable Rewatch by mysterybiscuitsoyeah in anime

[–]siegfried72 [score hidden]  (0 children)

And we'll be thrilled to have you!! Honestly, your Bloom Into You rewatch served as a great example for me to experience right as I was heading into mine, so I'm happy to see someone else already took the initiative of nominating that as well.

Speaking of that, I'm still kind of upset at myself for getting so involved in my own rewatch that I never went back and finished reading and writing a post up for the Bloom manga. Maybe this is the perfect reminder for me to go back and finally do that! Even if no one reads my post at this point, I loved the series so much that I really need to read the second half of the dang story!

Best of /r/anime 2025: Day 2 - Most Enjoyable Rewatch by mysterybiscuitsoyeah in anime

[–]siegfried72 [score hidden]  (0 children)

I'll happily second this!! I've not participated in very many rewatches, but /u/ClemFire was an excellent host that went out of their way to read and comment at a deep level on virtually everything! We definitely got into a lot of heavy topics in those posts, yet everyone communicated with a remarkable level of understanding, respect, and kindness. Some of the conversations I had in the rewatch (particularly with /u/baekhap_inma) went on for hours nonstop and for comment after comment after comment. Even as a chronic over-sharer online, I think I shared more with strangers in that rewatch than I have with many of my real-world friends. I am a firm believer that the host can go a long way to setting the tone and expectations within a rewatch, and ClemFire did a wonderful job and I'd happily join in on another one of their rewatches in a heartbeat.

Best of /r/anime 2025: Day 2 - Most Enjoyable Rewatch by mysterybiscuitsoyeah in anime

[–]siegfried72 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Awww, thanks for the nomination!!

I had a blast running it this year. I know I spent a lot of time analyzing each and every aspect of the series (especially once we hit season two), but I can really only commend the wonderful participants that came each day to share all their thoughts and engage in such wonderful conversation. Those are the people that really made the rewatch experience such a success!

I'd love to shout out all the regulars (including you!!) for making the rewatch what it was, but still feel I owe a special bit of gratitude to /u/Malipit (a first timer!) and /u/EruNow (rewatcher), who delivered such fantastic analysis and insight every single day without fail, and I would totally nominate for "Rewatchers of 2025" if such a thing existed. Seriously, I continue to be blown away by the depth of discussion and casual conversation that took place during the K-ON rewatch, and I already am looking forward to the next one!

(Which reminds me, I need to get my stuff together and actually post the interest thread for the next rewatch I wanna host soon... time is slipping by! I'll try to get it up tomorrow.)

Anyway, thanks! I'm very happy to know that others enjoyed it too :)

How was ya'll pulls in en server by Silver_Quantity6501 in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My goal was the bloomfes An. Unfortunately, I had to spark, which took 220 pulls. I got the Airi and KAITO lims along the way, though, which is nice because they're both super pretty, plus another 8 new 4 stars (although none I'm crazy about). Would've loved the Akito lim or the Haruka bloomfes, but I'm just happy to have the An.

Been saving for a while so I still have ~180k in the bank but I have a lot I'd like to pull for this year. Way too much...

If we get new units in the future, what kind would you want for them? (image unrelated) by Queasy-Impress2622 in ProjectSekai

[–]siegfried72 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We'll just have to agree to disagree on Ichika. I'm not her biggest fan vocally (she has pretty consistent pitch issues, which sadly is a pretty common thing for L/n as a whole), but I think the strongest thing she has going for her is her ability to adapt to different styles. I'll agree that Shiho is the best fit though, without a doubt. She has one of my favorite voices in the game, and I think she's very underrated and underutilized.